Holism (from holos,
a Greek word meaning all, entire, total) is the idea that all the properties of
a given system (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental,
linguistic, etc.) cannot be determined or explained by its component parts
alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the
parts behave.

Whether anthropology should be considered
as holistic in spirit or not is a debatable issue. The supporters of holistic
camp give the concept two senses, first, it is concerned with all human beings
across times and places, and with all dimensions of humanity (evolutionary, biophysical,
sociopolitical, economic, cultural, psychological, etc.). Further, many
academic programs following this approach take a "four-field"
approach to anthropology that encompasses physical anthropology, archeology,
linguistics, and cultural anthropology or social anthropology. Each of these
unique subdisciplines in anthropology contributes different aspects to the
understanding of humans in the past and present. Rather than focusing on a
single aspect of being human, such as history or biology, anthropology is
distinct in its holism. These subdisciplines provide the basis for this
holistic approach. Second, the functional school which strives for an approach
of studying human society and culture in terms of integrated components
together comprising a social hole.

According to McGee and Warms’s discussion
of Boas in their history of anthropological theory, Boas “pioneered the concept
of cultural relativism in anthropology.” Further, his approach of historical
particularism emphasized the discipline’s holism, and drew upon the study of
“prehistory, linguistics, and physical anthropology” (McGee and Warms 2000,
p.131). Boas’s desire to introduce scientific rigor to this emerging academic
field and his quest for holism were directly responsible for academic American
anthropology acquiring the four-field signature of cultural (social)
anthropology, archaeology (or prehistory), biological (or physical)
anthropology, and linguistics anthropology (Miller 2004, p. 2). This holistic
approach would distinguish American anthropology, going forward, from its
European progenitors. Boas also brought to this emerging discipline a new
“agenda for social reform” as well as theories of race that challenged the
prevailing status quo beliefs. He believed that environment and nurturing were
significant factors in human development. In his 1940 essay, “Anthropological
Study of Children,” Boas noted, “Some observations have been made that
illustrate the influence of environment, not only upon growth of the bulk of
the body but also upon some of the forms that develop very early in life” (Boas
1982, p. 101). Boas’s students were the first generation of formally trained
academic American anthropologists, and many would become leading figures in the
discipline— Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Edward Sapir, and Ruth Benedict.
Subsequent students included Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston.

In contemporary cultural anthropology,
the theoretical positions of the cultural materialists and the interpretive
anthropologists correspond to two different definitions of culture. Cultural
materialist Marvin Harris defines culture as the total socially acquired
life-way or life-style of a group of people, a definition that maintains the
emphasis on the holism established by Tylor. In contrast, Clifford Geertz,
speaking for the interpretivists, defines culture as consisting of symbols,
motivations, moods, and thoughts. The interpretivist definition excludes
behavior as part of culture. Again, avoiding a somewhat extreme dichotomy, it
is reasonable and comprehensive to adopt a broad definition of culture as all
learned and shared behavior and ideas.

While, the
holistic approach permits anthropologists to develop a complex understanding of
entire societies, anthropology also adds another dimension of analysis through
cross-cultural comparison. When examining any particular society, the
anthropologist is interested in seeing how that society is similar to or
differs from others. This perspective allows anthropologists to open their eyes
to what may seem "obvious" or "natural" in the cultural
world in which they are immersed. For example, an anthropologist studying
Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Rwanda will understand this experience and its
theoretical implications more fully by comparing it to the Serb-Croat-Albanian
conflict in the former Yugoslavia and to other cases of nationalism which have
not led to mass violence, such as the situation of nationalism and separatism
in Quebec Click on the links below to find out more about social and cultural
anthropology.

Holism is also
seen as a research strategy that separates cultural anthropology from other
disciplines. Holism is the search for systematic relationships between two or
more phenomena. One of the advantages of lengthy periods of fieldwork and
participant observation is that the anthropologist can begin to see
interrelationships between different aspects of culture. One example might be
the discovery of a relationship between ecological conditions, subsistence patterns,
and social organization. The holistic approach allows for the documentation of
systematic relationships between these variables, thus allowing for the
eventual unravelling of the importance of various relationships within the
system, and, ultimately, toward an understanding of general principles and the
construction of theory.

In practical terms, holism also refers to
a kind of multifaceted approach to the study of culture. Anthropologists working
in a specific cultural setting typically acquire information about topics not
necessarily of immediate importance, or even interest, for the research project
at hand. Nevertheless, anthropologists, when describing the culture they are
working with, will often include discussions of culture history, linguistics,
political and economic systems, settlement patterns, and religious ideology. Just as
anthropologists become proficient at balancing emic and etic approaches in
their work, they also become experts about a particular theoretical problem,
for which the culture provides a good testing ground, and they become experts
about the cultural area, having been immersed in the politics, history, and
social science of the region itself.Anthropology's
holistic perspective helps fieldworkers understanding this pattern. Holism
means that an anthropologist looks at the entire context of a society when
analysing any specific feature. For example, to understand the Japanese tea
ceremony, anthropologists might investigate Japanese religion, aesthetics and
history, as well as the economy, social relations and the politics of gender.
Their colleagues studying medical practices in Japan might find the tea ceremony
interesting as an alternative therapy used by people who also rely on
hospital-based physicians.

Functionalist
assumption was that the constituent parts of every society, from individuals to
the largest political and social institutions, must be seen as interrelated and
from a holistic point of view. While variations on this assumption divided
British anthropologists from their U.S./American colleagues (see below), the
important methodological ramification of this assumption, holism, remained true
on both sides of the Atlantic. In other words, all constituent parts of a
society must be seen as interacting with and influencing all others. As a
result, it was impossible to study, for example, kinship in this paradigm without
also looking at religion, politics, subsistence, and all other aspects of
society.

Every version of
the theory is that functional characterization is holistic. Functionalists hold
that mental states are to be characterized in terms of their roles in a
psychological theory—be it common sense, scientific, or something in
between—but all such theories incorporate information about a large number and
variety of mental states. Thus if pain is interdefined with certain highly
articulated beliefs and desires, then animals who don't have internal states
that play the roles of our articulated beliefs and desires can't share our pains,
and humans without the capacity to feel pain can't share certain (or perhaps
any) of our beliefs and desires. In addition, differences in the ways people
reason, the ways their beliefs are fixed, or the ways their desires affect
their beliefs — due either to cultural or individual idiosyncracies — might
make it impossible for them to share the same mental states. These are regarded
as serious worries for all versions of functionalism (see Stich 1983, Putnam
1988).

Some
functionalists, however (e.g. Shoemaker 1984c), have suggested that if a
creature has states that approximately realize our functional theories, or
realize some more specific defining subset of the theory particularly relevant
to the specification of those states, then they can qualify as being mental
states of the same types as our own. The problem, of course, is to specify more
precisely what it is to be an approximate realization of a theory, or what
exactly a “defining” subset of a theory is intended to include, and these are
not easy questions. (They have particular bite, moreover, for analytic
functionalist theories, since specifying what belongs inside and outside the
“defining” subset of a functional characterization raises the question of what
are the conceptually essential, and what the merely collateral, features of a
mental state, and thus raise serious questions about the feasibility of
(something like) an analytic-synthetic distinction. (Quine 1953, Rey 1997).

As the name
implies, the primary quest for understanding among functionalists was the
search for the biosocial or social structural function of any given institution
for maintaining the integrity of society. Functionalists assumed that all
social institutions or cultural traits, no matter how obscure or seemingly
maladaptive, were somehow integral to maintaining the society or culture within
the ecological and social contexts in which it existed. Methodologically, this
contributed to the development and refinement of anthropological relativism,
the belief that all cultures and societies, as well as their constituent traits
and institutions, must be looked at in their own context rather than judged by
the values and norms of the anthropologist.

Cultures are
integrated. To state that cultures are internally integrated is to assert the
principle of holism. Thus, studying only one or two aspects of culture provides
understanding so limited that it is more likely to be misleading or wrong than
more comprehensively grounded approaches. Cultural integration and holism are
relevant to applied anthropologists interested in proposing ways to promote
positive change. Years of experience in applied anthropology show that
introducing programs for change in one aspect of culture without considering
the effects in other areas may be detrimental to the welfare and survival of a
culture. For example, Western missionaries and colonialists in parts of
Southeast Asia banned the practice of head-hunting. This practice was embedded
in many other aspects of culture, including politics, religion, and psychology (i.e.,
a man’s sense of identity as a man sometimes depended on the taking of a head).
Although stopping head-hunting might seem like a good thing, it had disastrous consequences
for the cultures that had practiced it.

Anthropologists
like La Barre emphasized holism in anthropology, as indicated by his classic
1954 work, The Human Animal. Here, he showed how specific human traits such a
language, family, and culture were reciprocally related to the specific biology
and evolution of the human species. He later continued this theme and argued
for the role of human biology in religion and even gender. In his 1970 classic,
The Ghost Dance, he argued that
religion’s origins must be sought in its creators, human beings, and their
experiences of socialization and society, a theme to which he returned in his
last book, Shadow of Childhood
(1991).

American
anthropology continues to embrace holism, and although the four-field approach,
the culture concept, and cultural relativism have drawn sharp criticism and
debate, they remain cornerstones of the discipline’s distinctiveness. American
anthropology’s history of contributing to social reform has also attracted new
thinkers that include women, nonwhite, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and
transgendered anthropologists. Their contributions include ongoing
interrogations of evolutionist

theories,
positivism, modernization, critiques of ethnocentrism, homophobia, sexism, and
racism, both in the society and within the academy, and challenges to the
scientific validity of the concept of race, while acknowledging the power of
social race. Their interpretive approaches and use of identity politics support
methodologies quite different from the empiricism that H. Russell Bernard
(1998) claims is ubiquitous to the discipline. These characteristics, along
with the persistence of the four-field approach, and a long-standing tension
between humanism and science, continue to distinguish American anthropology from
its British and French cousins.

Its Kaleidoscope

A cotraveler who seats endlessly on a chair that we tend to call world and moves through wonder places. Try not to move from the chair, transcending time. Try to unearth silences and capture through multiple lenses. Behind the corner of my eyes there are things I can not see... things I do not understand...
So here I am with words to share and become a cotraveler from my being. Yes, so many things to express but not genuinely gifted with skills.